


Event Horizon

by phantomas (sil)



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-24
Updated: 2010-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sil/pseuds/phantomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Dizmo in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge</p>
    </blockquote>





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dizmo in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge

Delirium walks slowly, one step after the other. Her hair shows flashes of colors, a rainbow of dried flowers. She makes butterflies and dragonflies, but they turn into stones as they fly high above. Delirium looks up at them, now and then, and then forgets she was looking.

Dream is sitting on a stone. The desert sand all around him reflects the pale nocturnal light in minuscule fragments, tiny flickering sparkles like a scattered handful of diamonds.

"TeHy SaY you'Ve ChanGEd," Delirium drops to sit beside her brother. "WeLL, Of COurSe. I haVE cHANgEd too. LOOK!"

Horses have appeared, but there are no riders on their saddles. Their eyes are flaming, their nostrils wide, and there is white foam on their back and flanks.

Dream sees them, but they don't matter. The material of the world is Dream's, insubstantial filaments of silver. There are castles built on clouds, and neverending corridors, and yes, deserts with no end. Dream is king of it all.

Delirium drops back, legs spread on the sand. "I'm coLd. ArE yOu?" She opens her hands, palms up toward the black sky. An illusion, maybe, or just the chasm of what it was, and what it will be.

Dream shakes his head, quietly. He reaches around Delirium's shoulders with his arm, and wraps part of his cape around her. There's a hole in his trainers, he notices. Delirium's boots are painted in stripes of purple and red.

Brother and sister sit together, in silence. Time isn't of essence. Time is lost in the desert, too. The Endless liked to play with it, when they were young.

"SoMEtiMes I ThinK," Delirium murmurs, poking holes in the sand with her fingers, but still looking up. "That yOU CoULd call mOrE oFteN. But tHEn I wouLd Be anNoYEd. MayBe we ShouLd HaVe FrieNds. WE CouLd be fRIenDs! We WoUld bE grEat FrIendS."

Dream smiles. Just a small smile, but true enough.

"yOU are FrieNDs wiTh DeaTH, I knoW yoU aRe," Delirium insists, and the rainbow projected by her fingertips explodes in flashes of blue. "It never RainS." She adds.

"Not here, no," Dream wants it so. The rain disturbs him.

"I thOught I shoulD cHeck oN yOu. BuT then I'm Here and I See yoU and aLL The rEst and tHere is So muCh sPace hEre, and I do RemEmbeR, we fouNd ouR brOthEr, tHen We Lost hiM again."

"That's how it went, yes, sister." More or less, of course. Destiny would say that everything happens as it will, as it has, as it does. All at the same time, as it's written at the same time as the words appear on the page, as the page turns.

But there's a moment, always, that Dream now thinks he can recognize, feel it on his skin, that moment when one more step will solidify the sand into rock, the unhappened into the happened, the child into adult, the monster into saint.

One single moment, in time and space and all around everyone - alive or not, existing or Endless. That moment, when that one step will change everything forever. From where Dream didn't come back, and now another Dream reigns.

And as he sits here, with his arm wrapped around his sister, Dream knows that such a moment might be just there. If Dream turns around, if he tilts his head, if he reaches out with a hand to the delicate green nightingales Dream is making, trying to hold one in his palm.

Each single moment, a lifetime, a multitude of worlds and kingdoms and dreams, all changed, forever.

This is such a moment.

And then Delirium laughs.


End file.
